Menlo Coaching Admissions Consulting Reviews

Alice and the Menlo team have supported me through every step of the process from school selection in January to getting accepted by HBS in round 1. Most helpful were Alice's attention to detail in brainstorming and perfecting my essays, and also her vision on how to best portray my candidacy given my unique background and career goals. I trust her 100%.

I am a "non-traditional" candidate and Alice takes the time to get to know me and my career path in detail. Throughout the application process, she asked thoughtful questions, provided candid feedback on essays and resume while making sure I was my genuine, authentic self. This was my main differentiator to getting accepted to HBS.

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Rebecca and the Menlo team were the consultative experts I needed to advance my MBA aspirations. Going into this process I knew that I was facing an uphill battle to get into the top-tier programs I was looking at; my undergraduate GPA was less than stellar, I am in an over-represented applicant pool and I just turned thirty. Rebecca’s help in framing my story, which in part explained my GPA troubles, was a key part of me not only getting into Booth, Kellogg, Stern and Jones but also being offered scholarship at three of the four. The process Rebecca and Menlo have created is challenging and highly structured in order to keep things moving and ensure that the final product best represents each applicant they work with. This process encompassed all aspects of the application, including working with my recommenders to help them create the most impactful letters.

Rebecca took the time early on to learn my story and motivations. With that insight she helped me identify an MBA path that worked for me as I was advancing at work (part-time over full-time or EMBA) and what schools I may fit best with. When it came to the applications and essays, Rebecca truly differentiated herself. I lost track of how many iterations we went through for each essay but it was significant. Her expertise in taking what I now realize was a rough starting point (but at the time thought was a near finished essay) and condensing it down to the points I was really trying to convey within the wordcount that I was given was exactly what I needed and worth every penny. Later on in the process, Menlo’s interview prep gave me extreme confidence going into an nerve wracking situation.

The cost is significant but having full access to a responsive and engaged consultant is worth it. Interestingly enough, as I look back on some of discouraging times in my application process with the exam, I question if I would have given up had I not already made that initial investment in a consultant and myself. My only other hesitation with engaging Rebecca was her European location but after going through this entire process, including dozens of calls and significant digital communication, I can say that the time difference was no issue at all. Rebecca made the times I and other stakeholders in my MBA were available work. If you are serious about getting your MBA at a top school, particularly if you know you are a less than perfect applicant, Rebecca and Menlo will give you the best shot at getting to where you want to be. I cannot recommend them enough!

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I knew that I was applying later on in my career and wanted to ensure I put my best foot forward in order to secure an acceptance to a top MBA program. From my first conversation with Rebecca, I knew she was the perfect person for the job- she immediately came across as down-to-earth, authentic, and very knowledgeable about the admissions process. These were all values that were extremely important to me. While I knew the MBA process was competitive, I never wanted to sacrifice my values to secure a spot. Rebecca proved over the course of the 9 months we worked together that our first call wasn’t a sales pitch but rather her true self.

The stresses of everyday life don’t stop while applying to MBA programs and I can’t emphasize enough around the importance of being able to connect with your consultant. Rebecca was extremely empathetic with me throughout the process, even at times when I’d become down on myself and want to give up on the application process. Rebecca would continuously check in on me to ensure that not only was I getting my application work done, but also to make sure that I was doing okay with other stressors going on in my life. She was able to break down the applications into bite-size chunks that allowed me to never become too overwhelmed with the process (even while re-taking the GMAT!).

Due to personal circumstances around COVID, I felt it was best for me to request a deferral. Rebecca was a great sounding board for thinking through this decision and on the best way to present my case to the admissions team. As a result, I was able to successfully and seamlessly secure my spot for the Class of 2023.

Menlo Coaching (and Rebecca) are truly exceptional consultants that leave no detail unturned. They provide you with a roadmap and give you honest feedback in order to make sure you have the best chances at securing an acceptance from a top MBA program. I have no doubt that choosing Rebecca made all the difference in me receiving offers from top MBA programs despite weaknesses in key areas of my application. While their price point might be higher, I can assure you that you will not regret it.

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Working with Yaron was a life-time experience. He changed the way I was perceiving communications, from McKinsey's situation-complication-resolution to a narrative and storytelling. He made me rewrite the core Stanford's essay (what matters for you most and why) 8 times, always from scratch (we had only 6 weeks till the deadline). Each time I felt like an onion losing next layer. At some point we went so much personal, so that had to take a few steps back, into business-related dimension. He helped me to think of my story in a sincere, unique and powerful way.

What to expect from Yaron? Genuine curiosity in your personality, professional attitude, quick response, readiness to involve his colleagues when needed, patience, no stress. What not to expect? He never offers his ideas on what to write, it's only you and your story. His touch is powerful but invisible.

If you feel you are an average applicant with somewhat boring background and low to zero chance to get into top-10 schools, you are wrong and you should talk to Yaron. You will maximise your chances, learn on the way and enjoy the process.

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I highly recommend working with Rebecca from Menlo Coaching. Rebecca's guidance throughout the MBA admissions process was unparalleled. Admittedly, I was slightly apprehensive to hire an admissions consultant given the high price tag, but I have absolutely no regrets. I was admitted to all but one of my top 10 MBA programs (including my #1 choice) despite having a subpar GMAT score and a non-prestigious academic background. Here are the top reasons you should strongly consider working with Rebecca:

1) I was extremely impressed with her commitment to helping me put my first foot forward in the application process. She showed extreme attention to detail for all of the materials she reviewed, and not once did she compromise on quality, even though we were working on a compressed timeline. Some documents that required significant feedback went through 20+ rounds of edits.

2) Rebecca's core competency is writing (journalist by training), which is exactly what you want from your MBA admissions consultant. Even if you already feel comfortable with your story, the other half of the battle is communicating it in a way that is clear, compelling, and authentic in the word count limits. I still apply some of the guidance Rebecca provided on written communication in my day-to-day job.

3) If you are in North America, the time difference (Rebecca is in Amsterdam) works in your favor - I got into a great routine of spending 2-4 hours in the evenings after dinner working on drafts and sending to Rebecca for feedback before going to bed (which she would provide during her workday while I was sleeping).

4) Rebecca is also a very pleasant person to work with - inevitably you will end up spending a lot of time talking to your consultant, so it is important that whoever you work with is easy to get along with. I felt comfortable opening up to her about my personal life very early in the process, allowing us to put together a very compelling narrative about my personal and career journey thus far and where I see my future going. I plan to stay in touch with Rebecca and hope that our paths will cross someday.

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I reached out to David and his team as I was preparing for my business school interviews. Given that I was a deferred / "2+2" applicant, I was pretty unsure of what adcoms would be looking for. I had 5 interviews total. Though I had a below average GPA, was an ORM, and came from an over represented professional background (banking), I was ultimately accepted to Wharton, Sloan, Booth, and CBS. I am waiting to hear back from Kellogg.

David and Obinna were integral in helping me ace my interviews. I had 3 interviews one consecutive days, and after having what I thought was a terrible Wharton interview (which was also my top choice school), I was incredibly discouraged. However, David and Obinna's support after I debrief them on the interview allowed me to focus and ace my following 2 interviews that week.

The Menlo team took an extremely meticulous and personalized approach, and they went as far as hiring a speech/acting coach to help me be 1000% ready for my interviews, both in content and presentation. Sloan asked for an additional essay after I was invited for an interview, and though I did not purchase essay editing services, David offered to go over/edit my essay for me. His willingness to help and extremely fast responses (he usually got back to me within 12 hours, and always within 24 hours) are testaments to the investment and care that he puts into each of his clients.

I plan on reapplying in 4 years to HBS and GSB, and I will certainly be purchasing the comprehensive package (early birds package). David and I also reviewed my applications post acceptance decisions to identify strengths and weakness so that I'll be most prepared for future applications, and the advice he gave me was extremely pointed and thoughtful.

I have no doubt that the Menlo team was integral in helping me gain acceptance to 4 of the M7 schools!!!!!

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I worked with David exclusively in R2. David is extremely knowledgable about MBA application from school selection to scholarship negotiation. I was successfully admitted to two M7 schools with scholarship.

I strongly recommend to work with David, because he doesn't use a cookie cutter approach for everybody, instead, he helped me craft a unique and compelling story. I come from a very untradtiional background with low GPA and average GMAT. He still managed to help me create a very strong application.

David is very resourceful. He has sent students to almost every top MBA school in the world and kept in touch with most of them (this tells how satisfied we are wth his services!). I had a last minute school-specific question when I was working on an application, he reached out to one of his students at that school and answered my questions.

If you come from an untradtionanl background or have less impressive stats, David will discover your most unique story/strength and help you create a strong application package.

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tl:dr I was accepted at 3 T20 FTMBA programs (with money at 2), waitlisted at 2, and will be attending my dream school in the fall.

In my search for an admissions consultant, it was important to me that the reviews I read through were genuine and authentic. Though there isn’t a secret sauce to identifying these, key characteristics immediately jumped out for David’s reviews: long, detailed reviews that couldn’t have been completed in a minute; the human side of David that every single person raved about; and, reviewers specifically talking about the enjoyment of the process (and NOT, just the prestige of the admit results). But in actually working with David, I realized a few other things.

1. Full service nature - Because David and his team are with you from the moment you begin working with them until your last scholarship negotiation, you can take comfort in the fact that he is just as invested in seeing you succeed as much as you want to. And because he’s with you every step of your application journey, you can rest assured that there will be few, if any, stones unturned that will ensure who you are as an applicant is fully displayed to its potential. Because of Menlo’s expertise and resources, I was never having to second guess the comments and feedback that I received. And any qualms you can take off of your mind during this process are so vital and important.

2. Timely and thorough feedback - Because there are so many different parts to a successfully admitted application (and interview process), having to complete all of the tasks could seem overwhelming. But knowing that I didn’t have to wait many days for turnaround really put me at ease as I continued to work through. And when there were assignments I was apprehensive about doing or didn’t quite know how to approach, I simply sought out advice from David, and he’d respond in a very simple to understand way that made the task at hand far less daunting.

3. # of clients/1:1 relationship - Because David doesn’t continue to take on client after client after client just for the money grab, the attentiveness that is shown to you really shines through (as exemplified in the two prior points). It goes further than that though. There was a calmness within me whenever I interacted with David, knowing that he wasn’t taking in more clients than he could handle, thus, having less time for me, thus making me stress out even more about the application process. None of that. That to me, is one of the most important differentiators when you’re looking for an admissions consultant.

One regret that I have? Not working with David sooner. Having done so probably would have helped my long-term health in not having had to stress as much as I had beforehand.

Stop your search, and just schedule that initial consultation. Trust me.

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I decided to apply to business school shortly before I turned 28; I therefore did not make decisions in my undergraduate training, early career, or extracurriculars that would directly funnel into my MBA applications. At the same time, I had immense passion for my experiences leading up to the MBA application. Having decided I wanted personalized help to make sure I put my best foot forward, I Initially expected only to turn to Rebecca for help communicating my excitement effectively. In practice, Rebecca guided me to a critical second prong in my overall application strategy: doubling down on the parts of my profile still under my control.

Without Rebecca as a coach I would not have reached a high-700 GMAT score, pivoted my application strategy due to new information at work, pushed beyond 3-4 essay drafts, connected personally with each of my target schools, or performed extensive interview prep. Each of these very concrete efforts, informed by Rebecca’s strategy, proved critical in my applications, and drove my overall outcomes. Rebecca helped me shift my focus from PT programs to FT during re-orgs at work and as the outlook for the overall job-market changed (just prior to the start of Covid-19). These insights proved very prescient; I now will be attending Kellogg FT in fall (which happens to be Rebecca’s alma mater). I was also admitted to McCombs, Tepper ($70K scholarship), and Ross ($30K scholarship). I ultimately canceled waitlist decisions at Haas and SOM.

The combination of these two focus areas -- making sense of my pre-MBA experiences and doubling down on the application -- also produced outstanding results off-paper. Having now turned my professional experiences inside-out and examined my interests from many different angles, I am much more confident in both where I came from and where I want to go. The process of expending tremendous amounts of effort and achieving a top outcome also encouraged me to continue setting reach-goals as I begin to plan for my post-MBA trajectory. This growth, in addition to the above results, came as direct results of working with Rebecca; both she and the team at Menlo have my strongest recommendation!

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Working with Yaron has been a fantastic experience. As a business owner, I faced many challenges while applying to business schools including a tight work schedule and a less than ideal GMAT score. Despite these setbacks, Yaron provided intelligent and honest feedback in a very timely manner. I knew I wanted to get an MBA, but working with Menlo, I was able to articulate my story while connecting the dots in a very effective way. With a powerful story, I had more confidence approaching other parts of the application process such as the networking, which initially seemed daunting. With this new sense of confidence, many new opportunities opened up and Yaron, with his honesty, definitely kept me on track. With his response time being so quick, I was pushed to work faster, leading to seven well executed applications. He guided me through every phase of the process from helping me decide which schools to apply to, to negotiating scholarships with the four schools I received offers from. I was impressed with how well structured the process was and the amount of insight Menlo Coaching offered during every step. If I had to do it all over again, I would certainly use Menlo. None of the other firms seemed as good or as personal. I was so pleased with my work with Yaron that even after I got accepted, I continued to work with Menlo for recruiting.

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